The election is over, but Marin County Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold said her elections department still has some 46,000 ballots to count.

About 40,000 of the uncounted ballots are vote-by-mail ballots.

"These are ballots that were turned in at the polls or came in in the last day or two before the election," Ginnold said.

She estimates there are another 5,000 provisional ballots — ballots that need to be verified for one reason or another — and about 1,000 that were faxed from outside the country or damaged. The faxed and damaged ballots have to transferred to sheets that can be processed by an optical scanner.

Ginnold said her department will provide the first update on the count on Friday and she hopes to complete the count before Thanksgiving.

Although the count is not expected to change the outcome of most Marin races, the Sausalito City Council election could be affected. Thirty votes separate third-place finisher Thomas Theodores and fourth-place finisher Vicki Nichols. The top three vote-getters will take seats on the council. Theodores has received 1,077 votes, Nichols 1,047.

Theodores said he is waiting to declare victory.

"It's unclear how many uncounted (Sausalito) ballots are out there," he said. "We are hoping to hear something soon."

As of Tuesday, the ballots of 85,516 Marin residents had been counted, or approximately 55 percent of the county's 155,025 registered voters. Ginnold estimates that when the uncounted votes are added to that total, the turnout for the election will rise to 85 percent. During the last presidential election in 2008, nearly 91 percent of Marin's registered voters cast a ballot.

President Barack Obama received the vote of nearly 74 percent of those Marin residents whose ballots have been counted so far, versus about 23 percent for Mitt Romney. In 2008, Obama received nearly 78 percent of the Marin vote versus about 20 percent for John McCain.

Democrats account for 84,374 of Marin's registered voters. The number of registered voters in Marin who decline to state their party preference, 35,193, outnumbers the 28,458 registered as Republicans.